


hepcat

by powerandpathos



Category: 19天 - Old先 | 19 Days - Old Xian
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1950s, Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Angst, Chicago (City), Dubious Morality, M/M, Requests
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 10:46:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16303691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/powerandpathos/pseuds/powerandpathos
Summary: The thing was, Guan Shan wasn’t stupid. He knew this was his legacy, and that it would end here. He knew he had an open wound that beckoned infection and a deeper knife, and he knew that He Tian’s brother could wield it, and wield it well. But He Cheng had been keeping his end of the bargain, and now Guan Shan had to keep his.





	hepcat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Thank you to Damien for requesting this fic, and to Laughing Wolf, @kaleidomarch and @lemonysharkbait on Tumblr for proofing!

‘You really shouldn’t take drinks from strangers. Didn’t your doctor tell you to stop drinking?’

‘How do you—’

‘Your liver levels were way up on your last blood results. I read them.’

‘What are you going to do to me?’

‘It’s already done. You’ll start to feel it in a few minutes. Struggling to breathe. Dizziness. It’ll be difficult to move soon. I’ve been told it’s like fallin’ asleep.’

‘Why are you doing this? _You’re just a kid_.’

‘I’m eighteen and—’ Guan Shan thought about it, tasted the answer like swallowing salt water. ‘Honestly? I’ve got no fuckin’ idea.’

 

* * *

 

 _Blue Suede Shoes_ was playing on the jukebox for the third time when Guan Shan sucked bacon grease from his fingers. He chased down pecan waffles with a vanilla milkshake—extra malt—and mopped up the syrup on his plate with a thumb swipe, using the fingernail of his index finger to pick out pecan fragments from between his teeth.

Angie’s was the best malt store in West Loop, a hole-in-the-wall of chequered linoleum tiles, chrome counters, and glitter-red stools that Jian Yi liked to spin on. Tonight it was home to a crowd of preppies nested back into Chicago’s universities and high schools, beatnik kids sucking on French cigarettes in corner booths, and a foursome of Chinese-American kids with blood on their knuckles and milkshakes in their bellies.  

‘Did you repeat this song fifty fuckin’ times?’ Guan Shan asked Jian Yi as he sucked out remnants of vanilla ice-cream and milk froth from his glass. He circled his straw around the bottom.

‘It’s a _good_ song,’ Jian Yi declared. He twisted in his seat until he faced away from the bar, milkshake glass clutched in his fingers, peanut butter syrup streaking along the sides. ‘I’m celebrating getting my first assignment next week. Did you hear _Billboard_ said Perkins is gonna be the next—’

‘Stop reading _Billboard_ , Jian Yi,’ Zhengxi sighed from the end of the row. ‘Maybe you wouldn’t be failing your tests if you actually studied. That test was important today.’

He Tian shook his head and put it bluntly: ‘You can’t wear a leather jacket if you read _Billboard._ ’

‘Come on, that’s—’

‘I don’t make the rules,’ said He Tian, shrugging. He snatched a waffle fry from its red-and-white paper basket, and soaked it up with the syrup on Guan Shan’s plate.  

Guan Shan scowled. ‘Whoever did should be fuckin’ shot.’ He dragged his plate closer to his chest, guarding the rest of his pecan waffles between a ready-and-raised knife and fork. ‘So, probably you.’

He Tian angled his body towards Guan Shan, propping an elbow on the edge of the bar. ‘You gonna pull your gun out on me?’ He Tian goaded, then rolled his eyes when the jibe fell flat. ‘Look. Leather jacket, cigarettes, steel-toe boots. You wanna look like that and read _Billboard_ , Jian Yi? Where’s the disillusionment? The anarchist, anti-pop culture bullshit? Practice what you preach, my friend.’

‘You can’t be disillusioned if you’re not being failed,’ Zhengxi pointed out. ‘You’re failing, sure, but no one’s failing _you_.’

Guan Shan’s cutlery clattered onto his empty plate, and he swallowed down the last mouthful. ‘Fuck you both,’ he said, using his tongue to dig out sugared starch from his molars. ‘Just let him read the fuckin’ magazine. And don’t get excited about an assignment,’ he told Jian Yi. ‘They’re not what you think they are.’

There was a beat of grainy silence while the next record slotted into place, during which Jian Yi held up a connected finger and thumb towards Guan Shan in an “OK” gesture.

 _Blue Suede Shoes_ started playing for the fourth time.

While groans rang out through the store, He Tian made no reaction but to lean back on his stool, leather jacket creaking, and Zhengxi chewed thoughtfully on a forkful of sunnyside egg. The movements that followed were precise: reaching hands, fingers weaponised around bottles—

—and ketchup squirting right onto the bleached white of Jian Yi’s t-shirt.

 _‘Hey!’_ Jian Yi cried, hands held up, shying from the condiment onslaught. _‘Uncle_ , you assholes! Uncle!’

He Tian wielded and fired mustard until Jian Yi’s t-shirt turned into an abstract painting, only accepting Jian Yi’s surrender when a glob of ketchup landed in the slick pompadour of his hair, and plopped down into his lap. Jian Yi turned his horrified gaze to Guan Shan, who had somehow survived the crossfire.

‘Don’t fuckin’ look at me,’ Guan Shan said, tossing him a wad of napkins. ‘You knew what you were getting into.’

‘But my _hair!_ ’

From the end stools, He Tian and Zhengxi had leaned over to clink their plastic bottles together behind them. The waitresses roaming the floor of the store wore disapproving expressions, helpless amusement tugging up the corners of their cherry red lipsticked mouths, coiffed rolls of hair bobbing while their heels clicked along the lino.  

‘You boys causing trouble again for me?’

Angie, pouring milkshakes behind the bar, her overalls stained with syrups and whipped cream, earned one of He Tian’s smiles—the kind that Guan Shan had seen too often directed at most women and some men for it to have any effect on him. It didn’t on Angie, either. She was a forty-something mother of three who’d gone from bullet-making in a munitions factory to milkshake-making in a malt store, and decided to keep the denim overalls. Whenever she passed, Guan Shan caught whiffs of hazelnut syrup and gun grease.

‘Would we ever, Angie?’ He Tian asked her. ‘And risk losing our waffle-malt combo privileges?’

Angie looked him up and down, hands on wide hips: she took in the leather jacket, biker boots, hair gel, the cigarette behind his ear and the one between his lips. Her eyes went to the parked Ariel 4G motorbike through the windows.

She said, ‘You tell me.’

He Tian winked, angled his head so the smoke blew out behind him. ‘I’ll tell you how well I tip your girls every time you let my boys in.’

_My boys._

Guan Shan replayed it in his head, rolling it over like an Atomic Fireball across his tongue until it stained red. A blessing and a curse, that phrase. The possession, the ownership, the thrill of being his. The reminder that the four of them weren’t too welcome in too many places in the dwindling aftermath of the Korean War—had never been too welcome anywhere—but they always had a place with him. 

Guan Shan hated it.

Angie took it for whatever it was. ‘Then leave the bottles on the table,’ she said. ‘I’m not havin’ any kind of war in here. And for _Christ’s sake, no more Blue Suede fuckin’ Shoes!_ ’

Jian Yi’s spoon scooped melting pools of frozen custard with a manic insistence, metal clacking against glass.

He Tian held his hands up. ‘You got it, Angie. That’s a promise.’

It was an irony-loaded kind of promise before events had even evolved, the kind that made Zhengxi and Jian Yi, still mopping off ketchup and mustard with wads of napkins, exchange a loaded glance.

‘Tell me you didn’t,’ He Tian said, watching Angie retreat.

Jian Yi slumped, dropped his spoon. ‘I can’t be sure there weren’t five.’

He Tian shoved the last of his waffle fries into his mouth, wiped his fingers on his jeans and his mouth in a balled-up napkin Guan Shan had already made use of. Guan Shan took it as a signal, shrugging on his pa’s army jacket and wedging his feet more firmly into his boots.

A group of preps were getting ready to steal their seats as soon as they were done; Angie took no reservations, and weekend lines usually swept out the door and down the street. Weeknights like this were quiet in comparison: procrastinating students, couples on date-nights, and hoarse-voiced mothers whose kids were on a sugar high.

‘Hey,’ Zhengxi murmured to the four of them as they prepared for an exit. ‘She Li’s got the booth over there.’

Guan Shan didn’t look. He’d clocked She Li over an hour ago, before they’d stretched themselves out across the empty stools at the bar. He’d seen the quiet smirk on She Li’s face.

Jian Yi clicked his tongue angrily and flipped the collar on his jacket. ‘Fucker just flipped a middle finger at me. I bet anything he cheated in the test today, word from the bird.’

‘Ignore him,’ He Tian instructed. He smacked down a few crisp tens onto the bar, and combed his hair back over his undercut. ‘We’re going.’

Except they weren’t.

As He Tian turned to leave, shoving his comb back into the pocket, one of the college kids standing behind them had already picked up a rainbow milkshake from the to-go end of the counter. They were expensive, two bucks a pop, a hefty sprinkle of jimmies, studded cubes of rainbow cake, whipped cream a mile high, a rainbow-dyed wafer straw, and a vanilla ice cream swirl of food dye. 

It didn’t look half so pretty upended onto He Tian’s jacket.

‘Shit, pal, I’m sorry,’ the offender said, a white guy with a crew cut and an Ascot tie. Guan Shan recognised the enamel pin on his flannel sport coat as belonging to the University of Chicago. ‘No harm meant?’

He Tian looked down at the mess. A muscle jumped in his jaw. ‘Can’t imagine you’d meant to do that,’ he said, voice painfully still. ‘In fact, I’m sure you hadn’t.’

‘Sure hadn’t,’ the guy replied. He hadn’t tried to clean it up, still held the emptied glass in his hand.

They weren’t supposed to carry weapons outside the institution, but Guan Shan patted at the switchblade in the pocket of his jeans, remembered the shurikens in the soles of his boots, if it came to it. He knew it wouldn’t, so he let his fists clench together instead.

Things went down pretty fast when Guan Shan and He Tian swung punches at each other—worse when someone else who wasn’t them started throwing fists.

It could have been clean—no harm no foul. But the rest of the college kids were pressing down smirks, and one was hiding a guffaw in the shoulder of his jacket.

‘ _Fucking commies_ ,’ one of them muttered, and Guan Shan froze. Half the store was watching the interaction.

He Tian took a step forward. He was a few inches taller than all of them, and She Li was trading dollar bills with other kids in his corner booth. Ice cream dripped from He Tian’s jacket and slid down onto Rainbow Milkshake’s buckskin shoes. The good thing was that you could get anything on leather without ruining it: coffee, ice cream, piss.

Blood.

Turned out He Tian was in a mood singular to throwing the first punch.

Guan Shan leaned back to avoid the swing, and his stomach swooped in absurd satisfaction as bone crunched, blood spurt, and Rainbow Milkshake cried out as he clutched at his face.

‘You broke my _nose_ , you chink shitbag!’

Buckled over, He Tian did well at landing the sharp jut of his elbow into the juncture of Rainbow’s neck where tendon met shoulder. It got him down onto his knees, and gave He Tian good access to jam his heel between one of the other college kid’s crotch. Someone cheered.

‘Low blow, honestly,’ Zhengxi commented, slouched back against the bar.

Jian Yi was crunching ice cubes from Zhengxi’s soda between his molars. ‘Naw, he had it comin’.’

He Tian blocked the righteous, awkward swing of a third kid. Rainbow milkshake plopped onto the lino and ice cream flew in specks around them. He Tian landed a four-finger jab beneath the kid’s ribs until he yelped.

Jian Yi yawned. ‘Just fucking roundhouse him, He Tian.’

‘Knock him out,’ said Guan Shan. His blood was singing, but he stayed back.

He Tian glanced back at Guan Shan for a beat, then yanked the kid forward by the lapels of his jacket. There was a dull, teeth-aching thud as He Tian’s forehead smashed into the prep’s, and Guan Shan saw the whites of the guy’s eyes roll back as he slumped down to the ground.

Two left.

He Tian looked at them.

Guan Shan counted five beats before they picked up their wounded and scampered from the store with laboured groans and whimpers, milkshake footprints left in their wake. Guan Shan wondered if they’d get the blood off the tweed.  

‘Let knowledge grow from more to more, and so be human life enriched.’ In the silence of the store, Zhengxi rubbed at the unshaven stubble on his jawline. ‘Pretty ironic for a college motto.’

‘You’re so smart, Xixi,’ Jian Yi sighed, hopping off the bar stool. ‘How’d you get so smart?’

‘By studying,’ Zhengxi answered dryly. ‘That thing you don’t do.’

Near the back of the store, Angie cleared her throat. Her face was a stormcloud.

In response, He Tian lifted up a ten dollar compensation note, slapped it on the counter, and walked out.

Outside, Guan Shan and He Tian hung back as Jian Yi and Zhengxi walked ahead of them to the parking lot, shoes grinding gravel underfoot. It was a warm night, humidity sifting away in an end-of-summer hallmark. Pink clouds streaked an orange skyline the colour of a setting sun, and lights blinked along the streets to diners and department stores and gas stations, street lamps flitting to life.  

‘Couldn’t even let them get in a punch?’ Jian Yi asked.

He Tian swore, boots scuffing against the ground. ‘No, but I should’ve.’ He turned his gaze to Guan Shan. ‘Would you have kissed it better?’

‘In your dreams, asshole,’ Guan Shan growled, jerking his face away from He Tian’s line of sight, his predator’s grin, pearly white teeth and gleaming eyes.

‘Count me out,’ said Zhengxi, shrugging off his blazer and heading towards his Hudson Hornet. ‘I’m monitoring weapons trials in the morning at eight. Qiu Laoshi wants me there by seven.’

‘He’s been riding your ass all week,’ Jian Yi complained. ‘You said you were gonna help me with my report analytics.’

Guan Shan waited for it. He Tian lit up a cigarette.

‘You’d better have beer,’ Zhengxi sighed eventually.

_Fucking predictable._

Jian Yi grinned. ‘Only if you give me a ride back, daddy-O.’

They took off in Zhengxi’s Hudson a few minutes later, after Jian Yi had stripped off his shirt and changed into Zhengxi’s sweater, and left He Tian and Guan Shan lingering in the parking lot. Guan Shan had gotten the L into West Loop with Jian Yi, and He Tian’s Ariel 4G stood gleaming beneath a lamp being orbited by moths like small, insistent satellites rebounding off the sun. He Tian perched on his bike, and Guan Shan rested his temple against the cold metal of the lamp pole. There was no sign of the college kids, which was almost a shame. Guan Shan would have relished finishing off the fight.

‘I look good in sprinkles, don’t I?’ He Tian asked, seeming unbothered about the state of his jacket.

‘Fuck off,’ Guan Shan said. He threw a napkin at He Tian from his pocket. ‘You have blood on your knuckles.’

He Tian looked at it before extracting it from the sticky mess on his clothes, cigarette propped behind his ear. He cleaned his hands meticulously, long fingers scrubbed free of nosebleed, while the rest of him stank of sugar and malt.

He threw the napkin in a trashcan, and snorted as he walked back over, a thought occurred to him. ‘Shame it wasn’t someone who deserved it,’ he said. He propped his shoulders back and plucked the burning cigarette from behind his ear.

Guan Shan wet his lips, shifting. ‘D’you want it to be?’

It didn’t take long for He Tian to catch up. They’d been caught up in tests all day, bodies and minds aching and only briefly soothed by the painkiller of waffles and milkshakes, but already He Tian was swinging a leg over his bike, kicking back the stand, and twisting his hand around the throttle **.** He jerked his head back, took what he could from his cigarette, and ground it beneath the floor.

‘Don’t mind the mess,’ he said, over the engine.

Guan Shan chewed on the inside of his cheek, breathed out heavily through his nose. His hips fitted snugly against He Tian’s, their thighs neatly aligned. Guan Shan leaned when He Tian leaned, He Tian’s shoulder blades shifting back, and Guan Shan avoided the sticky residue by planting his hands on the hot underside of He Tian’s white tee, skin warm, slightly damp, torso muscles clenched as they edged out of the parking lot and joined the flow of traffic. The vibration of the engine chased all the way up Guan Shan’s spine, and Guan Shan bit down on his tongue hard enough he could almost ignore it. There was a violence in being this close to He Tian.

It wasn’t the mess Guan Shan minded.

 

* * *

 

 

He Tian’s sweat smelled of vanilla.

‘You fuckin’ reek,’ Guan Shan told him.

‘I bet you want a taste.’

Guan Shan shoved him back. They’d been sparring for hours, midnight approaching tirelessly in a way that they were not. The _kwoon_ was silent, unregistered for use until dawn, the showers still damp from the evening training sessions. Probably, they shouldn’t have been there, but He Tian shouldn’t have knocked out three civilians in a malt store, either.

The spar was a cat-and-mouse game pushing them to the edges of the sunken training mats, and Guan Shan’s heel had touched down on the varnished hardwood floors more than a few times.

He Tian was a good sparring partner; he never held back his punches, made Guan Shan’s teeth ache with the bone-shudder of a front kick. He never made Guan Shan want to hold back his own.

Guan Shan looked at He Tian’s hands: swollen index finger, splitting knuckles. Blood had crusted beneath his left nostril, and he was grinning. His height and weight carried him forward viper-fast, and he had a firm grip on Guan Shan’s shirt before colliding his elbow with Guan Shan’s chest.

Guan Shan folded himself around the pain, forced himself to take it, mind blurring. He tried to jerk back from the jab, but He Tian’s grip was too strong—a weakness in itself. The closeness gave Guan Shan an opening, and his fist crashed into the unguarded underside of He Tian’s jaw. He felt skin and bone give way, and heard the smack of knuckles meeting He Tian’s throat.

He Tian’s hold on Guan Shan’s shirt fell away with the attack, but he kept up with pain in a way Guan Shan couldn’t—turned it into a numb static, where Guan Shan’s added to a stockpile of anger. Guan Shan’s arms were raised long enough for He Tian to grab them at the wrist, hands tight and painful as He Tian spun him around and locked his arms behind his back.

He Tian’s breath was heavy in Guan Shan’s ear. ‘You didn’t fight like this in the test today,’ he told Guan Shan.

Guan Shan struggled in the grip, his lungs burning. He grunted—no escape. ‘Maybe you weren’t watchin’ closely,’ he replied roughly, then braced himself.

The back of his head struck against He Tian’s nose.

Grip loosened, Guan Shan twisted and forced his knee up between He Tian’s thighs. He Tian was on his back by the time Guan Shan could fill breath in his lungs, shoulder blades smacking into the training mat, head thudding with a rebound. Blood streamed from his nose, and he was grinning as Guan Shan braced his thighs across He Tian’s hips, held him down like a wounded animal.

Guan Shan pressed down—paled.

He lurched off He Tian faster than he’d made any move during their spar.

‘You’re fuckin’ disgusting,’ he spat weakly, taking steps back.

‘And you’re a dirty player,’ He Tian replied, unashamed, getting to his feet.

‘We kill people for a livin’. Tell me what’s not dirty about that.’

 

* * *

 

He Tian had a way of making someone’s victory seem like a loss. Guan Shan realised this while they showered in the locker rooms, showers thick with steam, sweat and dirt burnt off his skin—the residue of Angie’s rainbow milkshake off He Tian’s.

Guan Shan didn’t look at He Tian when he reached for the shower knob, hot water spurting out from above him. He was a blurred presence beside Guan Shan of too much skin and too much muscle. He made life feel smaller without trying—made Guan Shan feel smaller. The trick, Guan Shan had discovered in two years, was making He Tian think Guan Shan already was.

‘Why is it,’ said He Tian, while Guan Shan rubbed a bar of soap through his hair, ‘that we’ve been training together for nearly two years and I know pretty much nothing about you?’

‘Could’ve asked,’ Guan Shan said. He put the bar in He Tian’s open palm, and rinsed the suds from his hair. He rolled the words in his mouth the same way they tripped off his tongue. ‘And stopped going snooping.’

‘I have asked,’ said He Tian. ‘But you’re annoyingly evasive.’

‘Probably means it’s none of you’re fuckin’ business then.’

‘You know everything about _my_ family.’

Guan Shan snorted. He shut his shower off, and padded out with squelching footsteps towards the open lockers for a towel and clean clothes. The flannel was rough on his skin, and it felt good in the same, utilitarian way scalding water did—nothing soft, nothing he’d grow to care for. He’d be ready for the brutality when it all came.

When He Tian appeared from the showers, Guan Shan said, ‘Everyone knows about your family because they’re the head of the institution. I know your family ‘cause it’s good to know the enemy.’

‘Since when was I the enemy?’ He Tian asked, wrapping a towel around his hips, not bothering to wipe the beads from his skin.

Guan Shan cast him a look that said he should’ve understood, should’ve known this, given his position—and known it well.

‘He Tian,’ Guan Shan said. ‘In this shithole of a place, you and me were enemies the second we fuckin’ _met_.’

 

* * *

 

This shithole of a place. The Institution. The travesty of a school, a brick and glass monolith built in Chicago’s Loop, excruciatingly obvious, and dangerously public for a building built to train killers, cornered up against the Chicago River with the CME, Board of Trade, Tech Institute and too many banks. A place Guan Shan shouldn’t have known existed.

And yet.

Guan Shan knocked on the door.

He Cheng’s face wasn’t one he wanted to see this early, mind still blurry and eyes still bloodshot from a fitful sleep. He’d dreamt of his parents bathed in red and mushroom clouds and bullet wounds healed over like bruises under his skin, and woke to a note under the door from his handler.

‘You’re late.’

Guan Shan scowled as he walked into the study, and dropped himself down into one of the leather armchairs. He’d woken hastily, shrugged on a v-neck that hadn’t smelled too awful, his dad’s jacket, and a pair of jeans with a grease stain on the right thigh. His boots were still unlaced.

‘You should’ve made an appointment.’

He Cheng wandered around to the other side of the desk. His expression was reproachful. ‘You should watch your mouth more,’ he warned. ‘And wipe that look off your face.’

Guan Shan didn’t. He looked around the study, same as usual. The morning was early and cold enough for a small fire to be lit up on the right wall, and through the shutters on the glass wall behind He Cheng’s desk, Guan Shan could make out the dewy flowerbeds of the building’s forecourt, and condensation-coated cars warming up along the street, thick with lifting fog and exhaust fumes. Guan Shan didn’t doubt He Cheng’s fire would be extinguished by noon when the late summer sun crept high into the horizon, the study cast in an orange glow like the inside of a furnace.

‘Well?’ said He Cheng. ‘The test.’

Guan Shan _tsk_ ed, slouching low in the chair. ‘That was fuckin’ days ago. You’re askin’ me about this now?’

‘I’ve been occupied. You could wait.’

‘You’re askin’ me to pull off one of the biggest ops in history and you’re tellin’ me to _wait?_ That’s bullshit.’

He Cheng pulled out a leather-coated file from the desk drawer, the sight of it familiar enough to tug Guan Shan’s throat down towards his navel, a sharp, gutting kind of pain like getting pierced on a fishhook.

‘You placed fourth,’ said He Cheng, leafing through handwritten sheets of paper, gridlines and numbers and hastily scrawled comments filling up the pages—a stark breakdown of Guan Shan’s success. Or lack of it. ‘You should have made third. Second, even.’

 _Not first_ , Guan Shan thought sourly. _That place is for someone else._

He shifted. ‘I passed, didn’t I? I didn’t fail. I did what you wanted.’

‘You were slow. You don’t think through your actions. You make mistakes.’

Guan Shan narrowed his eyes. ‘I got a perfect score. My last three— _four_ kills were good. My timin’ was the only reason—’

‘Shut up. Your _timing_ is going to get you killed, and lead everyone else to full exposure.’

‘I wouldn’t—’

He Cheng leaned forward. ‘This country can’t help itself, Mo Guan Shan. It’s belligerent as fuck and they’re starting to point the finger at Russia. They want to use nuclear weapons because it’s cheaper. That should tell you something, shouldn’t it? Suggest something, in the least.’

‘I’ve read the docket. I’ve had the speech. You’ve been preparin’ me for this for two years. I know what your family wants me to do.’

‘You know what the governing board wants of you,’ said He Cheng flatly. ‘What the Chairman wants on the Mainland. But your knowledge is superficial. You don’t understand _how_ it’s meant to be done. You’re a child.’

Guan Shan’s face started to burn. ‘You want a kid to assassinate the president of the United States,’ he said hotly, spit landing on the gleaming surface of He Cheng’s desk. ‘I’m eighteen. Don’t call me a fuckin’ child.’

A muscle jumped in He Cheng’s temple, his jaw clenching just slightly. He was a lump of hard coal, staining on the fingers, a dust cloud residue scratching on the back of your throat, settling in your lungs. Years later, a cancer that ruined you before you even got to say your goodbyes.

Guan Shan could feel the build of it already, but he knew it was there already. He’d realised the moment he saw He Cheng approaching him while he oiled down Chevies he’d never get to drive and washed the wheels of Chryslers he’d never afford to buy. He Cheng had been wearing a black suit with two men at his back, Guan Shan in grease-stained overalls, and handed Guan Shan the keys to a Cadillac. It had been an immediate landslide since then, a degradation of self Guan Shan thought he’d already reached.

He Cheng showed him there was further to fall. He made the descent easy.

It started with Project E.

Two hundred thousand men lost in the Korean War, and Guan Shan was aimed like a firearm at the men who’d sanctioned it, Japan still in pieces from the belligerence, a crumbling beacon that atomic weapons could not be used tactically. Not again. Not by a President with a happy triggerfinger mentality who recognised building hostilities between North and South Korea.

He Tian’s family knew why Guan Shan was there, because Mao had made it so. Guan Shan wondered if He Tian knew how much his family was under the new republic’s thumb.

‘Eisenhower has to go,’ He Cheng had said, over tea on Wentworth Avenue. ‘We think you could be the person who makes that happen.’

The thing was, Guan Shan wasn’t stupid. He knew this was his legacy, and that it would end here. He knew he had an open wound that beckoned infection and a deeper knife, and he knew that He Tian’s brother could wield it, and wield it well. But He Cheng had been keeping his end of the bargain, and now Guan Shan had to keep his.

‘Your judgment is clouded. You don’t think clearly enough.’

Guan Shan blinked back at He Cheng, brought himself back into the study. Along the bookshelf-lined walls, titles and authors stared back at him in their burnished gold script. Whoever wrote them had probably lived longer than Guan Shan would. Probably, they’d had quiet lives built around doing something they loved and took a moment to share it. Maybe Guan Shan’s name would go to the books, but not the way he wanted it to. Not nearly enough.

‘You chose me ‘cause I had somethin’ to do this for,’ Guan Shan said, eyes running along book spines. Absently, he touched the inner breast pocket of his dad’s jacket, plump with letters—from the war, when information was sparse and his father seemed harder with the distance, and now, the Springfield stamp still days-fresh. _When are you coming home, son? Chicago can let you go for a weekend to see your mama and baba. Work hard, but don’t forget us!_ ‘Don’t choose someone with a passion if you want them cold.’

The leather chair creaked as He Cheng re-positioned himself in the chair. He told Guan Shan, lighting a cigarette, ‘You’ve got anger and spite and a talent for vengeance. Not passion.’

Guan Shan might have winced at the caustic remark, but He Cheng had taught him to push that down, which he did—most of the time. He had to catch it quickly enough, like a wildfire before it spread to the trees, the dry grass, skin. Hot enough, and bones didn’t always survive the flames.

‘I’ll do better,’ he muttered. Rethought. ‘I’ll give you the results you need.’

‘Do that,’ said He Cheng. He flicked away ash. ‘I didn’t call you in for test scores.’

Guan Shan’s eyes slid back to He Cheng’s. The similarities between himself and his brother were startling even now, but there was a glimmer to He Tian’s dark grey eyes like coal twisting itself into a diamond that didn’t exist here.

‘Yeah?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said He Cheng. ‘Stop interfering with He Tian.’

A second passed, test scores and the week’s events darting in the meaty part behind Guan Shan’s skull, and then Guan Shan scoffed, rolled his eyes. ‘Tell that to He Tian. Guess I’m not the only underachiever here, but he’s the one who won’t leave me the fuck alone.’

‘Is that so.’

Guan Shan sneered. ‘It’s not like I’m encouragin’ him,’ he said. ‘He’s grown up thinkin’ he can have and take whatever the fuck he wants.’ He thought about the spar, a few nights ago, the feeling of He Tian beneath him, hard. They’d both known how it was going to end. ‘Think the blame for that lies somewhere else.’

‘This is bigger than you,’ He Cheng said, coldly stern. ‘This is millions of lives bigger than you. More important than you.’

Guan Shan took the degradation in his stride. ‘You think I don’t know that?’

He Cheng frowned, a single line in the furrow of his brow, and said, ‘I’ll speak to him. But stay away from him. This family isn’t a lenient one. There are others who could easily take your place.’

Guan Shan snorted, getting to his feet. _Don’t I fucking know it._

 

* * *

 

‘Why’d the college give me a new number again? Is this a payphone? Don’t they have real phones at that fancy college of yours?’

Guan Shan shouldered the phone beneath his ear, the plastic scratched from foreign hands. His stomach was starting to ache from lying on the floor of the dark hotel room, carpet burning onto his elbows, and outside, he was losing light. A plucky tune by The Sunnysiders, which had been playing in the hotel’s reception, was stuck on a loop in his head.

_Hey, Mr Banjo, play a tune for me…_

‘You know me, Pa,’ he told his father, trying to stay steady while he shifted the scope. ‘Always on the go.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You know, they shouldn’t’ve let you call me… Now isn’t really the right time…’

‘You should slow down before you make mistakes.’

Guan Shan breathed out through his mouth, let his shoulders relax. The view from the window was good enough, optics dwindling, Grant Park a darkening expanse of green twenty-eight floors below and emptying for the evening, men and women arm-in-arm, late-night office-workers hurrying across the gravel paths to the nearest L station or bus stop or motel. The crack in the window was wide enough to fit the barrel of a rifle.

‘I don’t make mistakes, Pa. You taught me not to.’

His father huffed on the other end of the phone. ‘Is that what you tell your teachers? You’d better not lose that scholarship with that arrogance.’

_Green, brown, green, yellow, green…_

‘Don’t worry, Pa,’ Guan Shan said, squinting through the scope. ‘I’m made in the shade, I—’

_There._

‘Guan Shan?’

Right where he should have been, sitting on a park bench: bowler hat, pinstripe suit, a copy of the _Chicago Sun-Times_ , a briefcase the colour of stewed plums. Guan Shan didn’t even know his name. The death warrant had only been paid for a few hours ago, Guan Shan sent as deliverer from the vantage point of the Conrad Hilton twenty-five minutes ago. He wouldn’t even get to sleep in the fucking bed, high thread-count sheets and room service snatched away.

He lined up the shot.

‘So, Guan Shan?’ said his father, commanding through the phone. He’d never lost that tone, through broken bones and infected wounds and a week forced awake and a body emaciated with hunger and a country that turned its back. He still spoke like everyone owed him an answer for a question he hadn’t asked—for a question he didn’t really deserve an answer to.

‘ _So_ I won’t lose it,’ Guan Shan assured him. He stilled, tried to steady his heart rate. ‘I promise.’

_Play, Mr Banjo, a happy melody..._

‘Your mother would cry for days. Don’t disappoint her.’

Guan Shan shifted, loosened the weight of the rifle on his shoulder, didn’t lose sight of the target. It was now or never, before _good enough_ became a risk the institution wouldn’t accept. ‘Have a little faith, Pa,’ he murmured. ‘I’d never fail you.’

‘I know you wouldn’t. You’re like your mother, always doing your best when no one’s even looking even if you don’t think it’s your best.’

Guan Shan squinted at the dipping sun, and cut in. ‘Pa, could you just—’

‘And that’s what’s always been good about you—’

‘—gimme a second so I can handle—’

‘—and I don’t want you to end up like me all useless and frightened and—’

‘—something for _just one second._ ’

Silence.

Guan Shan exhaled.

He pulled the trigger.

There was a kind of sickening magic in bending an index finger and watching a man jerk on the ground half a mile away while his brain activity came to a flat-lined end. Guan Shan swallowed. He didn’t watch for the aftermath, the late-night wanderers who would hurry about him, call for help, try to stop the bleeding from a wound made already irreparable and leaking into the gravel.

There would be a red stain there until the first fall storm washed it away.

‘What was that?’

Guan Shan tugged the gun through the window, closed it up. Phone still at his ear, he said, ‘What was what?’ Kneeling, he dismantled the gun with clean efficiency, put it back in a case that was shaped to hold a cello, clicked shut the clasps. If he’d paid attention, he would have felt his heart trying to pierce itself against his ribs, would have noticed the nausea that had greyed itself out into non-existence in his throat. He’d chosen not to pay attention a while ago.

‘That noise—like a—’

‘Someone knocked on the door, Pa. It’s nothin’. Don’t worry.’

‘It sounded like—’

‘I need to go. Someone’s callin’ for me. Study session. I’m sorry, Pa.’ _I’m sorry that this is what your suffering has made of me._

‘Guan Shan—’

Guan Shan hung up, and rested the back of his head against the glass window. He didn’t have blood on his hands; he hadn’t left a trace. He’d duck out of reception as fast as he came, fifty bucks spent on a night he wouldn’t get to have, probably ever. For a few seconds, except to his father—his mother, listening from another room, he bet—he hadn’t existed.

Getting himself up from the floor, hoisting the cello case over his shoulder, regulating his breathing as he walked to the door, he decided that was probably good enough.

_Hurry, Mr. Banjo, the night ends all too soon._

 

* * *

 

‘I didn’t know you played cello.’

Guan Shan grimaced at the sound of his voice. ‘Are you stalkin’ me?’ he asked, filling out the weapons return form. The room was small and dimly lit, several floors below the main building. The weapons officer had disappeared into the stacks a while ago to return the rifle, her desk separated by a hatched metal shutter. The stacks were a mile long, rifles and shotguns and small artillery crowded in lock-boxes on the shelves, bows and swords and maces kept there from another age. Guan Shan had only been behind the shutter once, broken in on a bet; he’d heard they kept bombs in another room at the back.

‘Ouch,’ said He Tian passively. ‘I saw you head down here with that giant fucking violin case on your back. Cut me some slack.’

‘Cut the gas, I’m busy,’ Guan Shan told him. His eyes scanned the form under the artificial strip lights.

_Did you encounter any problems while operating the leased weapon?_

Guan Shan bit the inside of his cheek. _I’d say it put a bullet in a guy’s head pretty fucking nicely._

He Tian peered over Guan Shan’s shoulder. His hair was newly washed, body clothed in a short-sleeved button down, grey slacks, no shoes. He had the soft glow of someone who’d just had the shit beat out of him in training.

He whistled slowly as he glanced at Guan Shan’s returns form. ‘A Savage 10FP, huh? Who was the poor fucker at the end of that?’

_To your knowledge, should this weapon, for any reason, be discontinued from use?_

Guan Shan frowned. _Depends how many people you want dead from within a mile radius, doesn’t it?_

‘That’s classified,’ he said eventually. He hesitated. ‘And just because you’re a fuckin’ He that doesn’t give you access.’

He Tian snorted, and took a step back. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not gonna force it out of you. That’s my brother’s speciality.’

Guan Shan clicked the end of the pen, hit the bell on the desk. ‘I’m done!’ he shouted out, pushing the sheet through a small opening in the shutter. He headed towards the elevator, shifted his jaw as He Tian sidled up beside him and punched the button for the students’ level, setting himself on one of the handrails, hands in his pockets.

The doors slid shut.

‘So, you gonna tell me why I just got fucked over by my brother in training?’

_Fuck._

Guan Shan recovered fast. ‘Maybe you’re not as good as you fuckin’ think you are.’

‘No,’ said He Tian. ‘He talked about you. Said I should be careful if I didn’t want you screwing up my future.’

‘You gonna make me repeat myself?’ Guan Shan shot back. ‘You’re probably not as good as you think you are.’

‘Fucking _hell_ , Guan Shan,’ He Tian muttered. He dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. ‘You’re driving me fucking _insane._ ’

Guan Shan knew what was on the line: come first, and be free. Come second, and be under his family’s thumb forever. Guan Shan was a spoke in that wheel of victory, and Jian Yi was He Tian’s reluctant ward. It had been that way for hundreds of years: He’s born and raised for the protection of the Jian’s. Sometimes, Guan Shan wondered about their roles being reversed: He Tian a guardian not for Jian Yi but for Guan Shan. It made something twist in his gut.

He Tian had lit up a cigarette, and while the elevator creaked upwards, smoke choked out the air between them.

‘You say that like it’s my problem,’ Guan Shan said. He realised he’d pressed himself up against the doors, ready for the escape, hands on the metal at his back. He wasn’t like his dad, who’d faced his violence head-on and got beat for it; being a sniper made him a coward. ‘You talk shit like everything’s someone else’s fault but _yours_.’

He Tian blew out a plume of smoke. ‘Then do me a favour.’

The pause was palpable, a heavy thickness like molasses dripping and hardening over the surface of their conversation. Guan Shan thought about his next moving in the face of the fucking arrogance of it all, he supposed that said something: instinct hadn’t kicked in for once. There was a decisiveness that hadn’t started with a swing-back and ended with blood and spit and bones colliding with the floor.

‘What is it,’ Guan Shan began carefully, ‘that you think I owe you?’

Guan Shan froze when He Tian reached into his pocket—and pulled out two slips of paper. ‘I have two tickets for the _Sayonara_ drive-in tonight,’ He Tian said. ‘One for me and… Do me the honour of using the second?’

Guan Shan still hadn’t moved. His mind was hinged on the fact that He Tian knew Guan Shan had just made a hit, and now he was asking him out to the passion pit to watch a movie. If Guan Shan ever got out of this, if the institute ever helped him cover his tracks after the shit he was going to pull over on history—he was never going to find someone who might offer the same.

He asked, ‘With you?’

‘No, with She Li— _Yes,_ with me. I know you get an intellectual hard-on every time someone brings up the Korean War.’

Guan Shan scowled, barely took the time to think about his answer when the words were tripping off his tongue. ‘You’re buying snacks.’

He Tian smiled, and the elevator dinged, doors sliding open at Guan Shan’s back. ‘I’ll even throw in a soda.’

 

* * *

 

It was a late summer night, farmland cropping up around them, the nearest house too many miles out, skies the colour of peaches and cicadas fretting in the tall grass. The leather seats of He Tian’s car were warm to the touch when Guan Shan first climbed in, the metal now cooling under Guan Shan’s denim-clad thighs as he settled on the hood, fried chicken and a large Coke anchored between his black boots. The field smelled of buttered popcorn and pollen, sugared funnel cake and greased engines.

Guan Shan had been to the drive-in a few times, a half hour out of Chicago’s city roads and into rural Illinois territory. The regulars were there: leather-coated guys pressed against the bitch stick and their girls between their thighs; wannabe Ivy Leagues with popped collars and lettered cardigans; girls fanning their skirts over the hood of their daddies’ Cabriolets. He Tian had a cigarette propped behind his ear and a switchblade in his jacket pocket, and Guan Shan wore a v-neck and dark jeans that matched the paint on He Tian’s Cadillac.

There were couples or groups of friends; He Tian and Guan Shan were the only two guys together. Guan Shan ignored this.

‘I’m shocked,’ said He Tian, elbows leant back onto the windscreen. ‘Are your arms okay in the light? I don’t think I’ve seen them before.’

Guan Shan snorted. ‘Funny,’ he said. ‘I forgot my jacket at the institution.’

An anthropomorphic bucket of popcorn was smiling on the projector screen at the front of the field thumbs raised, hooked to a speech bubble that read, _1 minute for snacks!_

‘You mean you don’t sleep in it?’ He Tian asked. ‘You take that thing fucking _everywhere_.’

Guan Shan rolled his eyes. ‘Whatever.’

‘I’m serious,’ said He Tian. ‘What gives?’

‘Does it really matter?’ Guan Shan jabbed a finger towards the screen, which was now flickering into animation. ‘Movie’s startin’.’

He Tian narrowed his eyes, but popped another anise gummy into his mouth, which turned his tongue black and made his breath smell of liquorice.

‘Spoilsport,’ he accused.

‘Fuck off and watch, would’ya?’

They had enough attention already, eyes latched onto the car—its owner, its passenger, with a kind of objectifying lust that Guan Shan felt like needle pricks plucking up patches of skin. He felt, too, the way He Tian looked at him in the dying light, an orange glow haloing the screen some fifty feet away, turning the flecks of Guan Shan’s shorn hair to a burning ochre, his eyes to molten pools.

Japanese music warbled through the speakers of He Tian’s Caddy, the technicolour imaging of a bucolic zen garden creeping across the projector screen, greens and oranges and blues bleeding into life while the sun dipped behind the horizon.

‘You look like the sun.’

Guan Shan looked at He Tian, who had a hand extended as if to run it across the prickly surface of Guan Shan’s skull.

‘You said this was about the Korean War,’ said Guan Shan, ignoring the hot twisting in his stomach like a curling iron. ‘That’s Japan.’

He Tian said, ‘It’s all the same, isn’t it?’

Guan Shan blinked at the jet landing on the screen, at Marlon Brando in a blazing yellow fighter helmet. His jaw shifted rhythmically as he said, ‘It’s really fuckin’ not.’

He Tian’s hand dropped.

The movie played on. White men in army uniforms muttered on screen against a backdrop of pagoda roofing and women in red yakata. Guan Shan got the jist quickly: forbidden romance set against foreign exoticism. How pale were the girls’ faces, how broad the men’s shoulders, US air force badges gleaming against their blue lapels.

Until the closing scenes, they didn’t talk. Guan Shan picked at his fried chicken, and He Tian worked through his packet of gummies and three more cigarettes. The butts burnt out on the grass beneath the car. On the screen, the tale unfolded, bureaucracy an untameable beast, Brando knocking on the door of the dead, slipping his shoes in the footwell at the door—and then the suicide.

‘The jacket,’ said Guan Shan quietly, eyes not leaving the screen. ‘It was my dad’s. He was in the Korean War.’

Guan Shan could tell He Tian was doing his damned fucking hardest not to look at him, and he heard the curse muttered under He Tian’s breath, followed by a steady inhale.

‘You never said. I’m sorry.’

‘Don't be,’ Guan Shan said. He watched the bodies on the bed, the red netting around the lovers, peaceful in a gauzed embrace. ‘It's not like he's dead or anythin’. He and my mom live down in Springfield now. But it fucked him up. Fucked us all up. He doesn’t wear it anymore but—I wanted to for him. Make people remember it or burn it, y’know?’

He Tian exhaled. ‘I thought you’d got it in some thrift store on the North Side. Shit, I need a drink.’

‘The best you’ll probably get here is a root beer.’

‘Yeah,’ He Tian murmured. He dragged a hand through his hair, gelled strands falling out of place. Guan Shan almost offered him his comb, when He Tian said, ‘Guess I understand why you’re here now.’

Guan Shan turned. ‘Why’s that?’

He Tian’s lips toyed with a smile, begrudging and wry, his glance sly. ‘I _thought_ ,’ he started, shuffling on the hood of the car, the paint squeaking beneath his boots, ‘that you’d been bought by my family to stop me from getting first. Like a—like a fucking honey pot. You know my agreement with them, right? If I get first place they’ll let me go. Anything less and I’m under their thumb for-fucking-ever. I thought He Cheng or my father had paid you. To screw things up for me.’ He shook his head. ‘Didn’t realise that you had a hell-bent reason for wanting to hurt people. Getting revenge for whatever shit your dad probably went through.’

Guan Shan stared at his cardboard food and drink tray, and thought briefly of nudging it off the edge of the car with his boot until it spilled across the ground. The anger was coiling up inside of him like a spring ready to shock itself back into place.

The last half hour of the movie playing obviously along, he said, ‘You really don’t know anythin’ about me at all…’

‘What do you—’

‘All this time and you really thought so fuckin’ low of me? Were you just waitin’ for me to fall on your dick?’ Guan Shan chewed on the inside of his cheek. ‘Was that what tonight was?’

He Tian’s eyes had fallen to black sockets, and the sound of the movie was drowned out by a sharp static in Guan Shan’s ears like an empty radio frequency.

‘Guan Shan—’

‘Fuck you,’ he threw out, cutting He Tian off. ‘I’m getting a drink.’

The car was blocked in; He Tian wasn’t going anywhere. Guan Shan’s boots hit the ground with a thud, and with a stinging petulance, he tossed the tray up with a flip of his hand until the burst soda swam down the hood. He pushed his way through cars and picnic blankets, flipping off muttered protests, deafening himself to He Tian’s distancing shouts. _Sayonara_ ’s closing scenes were the only light around, and towards the gravelled exit, Guan Shan squinted to see the pitch road ahead of him.

It would be a long walk back into town, and a cold wait with his thumb stuck out on the highway, but anger was a powerful thing, he knew, shoulders hunching around his ears, and a glower building his headache. He knew it would keep him warm.

 

* * *

 

_‘Here’s a scenario for you. There’s a barrel pressed to your forehead but your finger’s still on the trigger. Do you pull it or back away?’_

_‘What’s it matter? I’m dead anyway. I pull it.’_

_‘Why?’_

_‘Because I have to.’_

_‘Why?’_

_‘’Cause I need to.’_

_‘Why, Mo Guan Shan?’_

_‘’Cause he fucked over my pa and every other hopeless fuck who got caught in the war and denied them what they were due.’_

_‘And what was that?’_

_‘An education. Health care. Money. Thought that ‘cause they got caught by the Koreans or the Chinese that they must have been spies and not POW’s. Like all Asian people are the same. You fuckin’ know what the G.I. Bill is, He Cheng. You know why I’m here.’_

_‘Do you?’_

Guan Shan spat onto the floor, the memory spinning in his head. _‘Fight back,’_ he commanded.

‘No.’

Guan Shan gritted his teeth.

They had an audience, some twenty other students—not Jian Yi, Guan Shan had noticed—staring at them from the edge of the sunken mat in the _kwoon_ , their fisted hands on thighs, knuckles digging into their flesh while they watched He Tian spit blood onto the floor and Guan Shan swing his punches into a defenceless target.

 _Not defenceless,_ Guan Shan thought. There was a difference between someone who couldn’t defend themselves—and someone who chose not to.

‘Fuckin’ coward,’ Guan Shan spat, and the heel of his foot thudded into the jutting bone of He Tian’s hip.

He Tian crumpled, staggered, straightened. He breathed out slowly through his nose, and his eyes glittered. The top few buttons on his satin shirt had loosened, a patch of sheening pectoral muscle revealed. He made no attempt to fix it.

‘Get your act together, He Tian,’ He Cheng ordered sharply from the top of the mat, arms folded. ‘Both of you.’

Guan Shan worked his jaw over. He hadn’t seen He Tian since the night before, his feet still aching from the trek back to the institution, exhaustion weighing heavy on his bones, but he hadn’t been surprised when He Tian chose him as his partner for the morning—a regular, usual thrill that lasted some hours and put them both on their backs.

Except this time was different.

Guan Shan caught the fabric of He Tian’s pant leg, yanked it with pathetic ease until He Tian’s balance was swept from beneath him. There were winces from his classmates as He Tian’s skull rebounded off the mat, and Guan Shan knelt and dug his knee into He Tian’s rib cage. This wasn’t a spar; this was a domestic slaughter.

 _‘Fight_. _Back_.’

He Tian stared up at him, blood trickling from the side of his mouth where he’d bitten his tongue. ‘No.’

Guan Shan sucked a breath through his teeth. ‘You fucking—’

‘Alright, that’s _enough_ ,’ He Cheng snapped. He pointed towards the doorway. ‘Both of you get the fuck out of this room and go and sort your shit out before I sort it for you myself. _Remember what you are._ ’

Guan Shan carried that with him to the locker room.

He Tian took his time following, finding Guan Shan bowed over on one of the benches, his knuckles white on his knees.  

‘I’m _not_ your bullshit path to redemption, He Tian,’ he muttered slowly. ‘You can’t use me to make you feel better about yourself.’

‘I wasn’t trying to. I was reminding myself how much of an asshole I can be sometimes. Especially to you.’

Guan Shan’s face screwed up. ‘You know that’s even worse, right?’

‘Last night—I didn’t mean what I said.’

‘Yeah, you did,’ Guan Shan scoffed. ‘You thought I was going to fuck you if your family paid me enough. That’s what you thought. This whole fuckin’ time, _that’s_ what you’ve thought.’

He Tian stood over him. He didn’t try to touch Guan Shan, didn’t reach out a hand to run his fingertips across Guan Shan’s scalp. The poignant, familiar touches were foreign to them now. He Tian had made them all against his better judgment. And now that Guan Shan was real—now that he was made of authenticity and not sold sex, he was less attainable. How goddamn frustrating for him: to realise he had to _work_ for something for once.

Guan Shan used to wonder why He Tian would want to put his hands on someone like him.

When Guan Shan left, the silence stretched too thinly, He Tian’s footsteps didn’t follow.

Barefoot, Guan Shan wandered until he hit the courtyard, a Chinese-fashioned garden in the middle of a glass-made building in the middle of Chicago, hints of an older, different age peeking through: gabled rooflines over the colonnaded walkway, a scholar rock on the edge of a lily-speckled pond, fruit trees and flower beds blooming along the cobbled paths. Car horns and drilling machines were hazy background accompaniment for the birds, and Jian Yi was crouched against a rose bush.

Fifteen feet away, Guan Shan could still smell the vomit. He ducked behind a pine tree, rested the back of his head against the spine of it.

‘You need to get cleaned up—Get the blood off—’

‘ _No,_ Zhengxi. Go back to Qiu Shaoli before he fires you.’

‘C’mon, Jian Yi. You can’t hang around like—’

‘ _I’m not wiping it all off and pretending that everything’s fine_. It’s not. I don’t—even remember why I wanted to be a part of this.’

Guan Shan breathed out through his mouth and pretended he wasn’t wondering the same thing. When he blinked, he saw his first kill on the veiny backs of his eyelids. They hadn’t made it easier for him—a woman who looked like she could’ve been his mother. Someone who had kids, a husband. A couple of dogs she liked to walk in the evenings while the sun would set like a blush over the city. Someone who’d been leaking classified intel from Hong Kong ministers to the press.

Guan Shan had made it look like an accident, like a product of local crime, caught in the gang-made crossfire.

_The bullet in her head was too neat. Make the death fit the crime._

Guan Shan had emptied his stomach in the bathroom after the debrief, which, he supposed now, was better than the rose bushes.

‘You’re right,’ said Zhengxi. His voice had taken on a different tone. ‘You never really had a choice. You’d be here whether you wanted to or not.’

Guan Shan angled his head around the tree trunk; his nails were digging into the wood, splinters pushing up against his skin. Zhengxi had been right: Jian Yi was a mess. He was sheet white, blood flecked on cheekbones, matting his hair. Guan Shan could see the whites all around his eyes. The shock was getting to him.

‘You read the docket, Jian Yi. You know why you’re here. Who put you here.’

‘My father.’

Zhengxi nodded solemnly, couched at Jian Yi’s side. ‘He’s going to make you join the business when you’re done here. He wants you prepared, and while you’re here, until you’re ready, you’re safe.’

Jian Yi dragged a shaking hand through his hair, red smeared through the strands. He didn’t seem to notice. Zhengxi’s eyes darted cautiously around the garden, skimmed over the spot where Guan Shan was standing.

‘Do—do any of us have any control here?’ Jian Yi asked faintly. ‘We’re taking people’s lives and we don’t even get to be the ones to control that. We’re just told to. ‘Cause we think it’ll be for the greater good, like we’re some stupid superhero from some stupid comic book.’

‘Jian Yi…’

‘You know he—he _asked me_ why I was there. Why I was doing it. Why I had a gun to his head, and you know what I said? I said I had no fucking _clue._ Fuck, where’s the agency in _that_? We’re just kids following orders who aren’t told about the consequences too.’

‘It’s not your fault. You didn’t know.’

‘But I should’ve. I’m not like He Tian or—or Guan Shan. I can’t just do it without feeling something.’

Guan Shan blinked, and he realised he was on the ground, pine needles beneath him. He couldn’t pinpoint the moment the ground had risen to meet him, knees giving way. He couldn’t be sure when he’d started to hear his own breathing coming in short, staccato bursts like the air around him was running out, sucked through some vacuum that Guan Shan was too big—too physical to fit through. Too many bones and too much muscle and intestine and blood and tissue and not enough sheer lightness to let him just… float away. Just go.

Two things: the first, he had no real understanding either. He was riding on a wave the colour of Mars that He Cheng and the institute had wrapped its iron-fisted hand around and _squeezed._ His injustice was personal, and small—a non-ideological, private vengeance.

The second, He Tian was just as much a pawn as the rest of them. More than the rest of them. He had every right to lot Guan Shan in with all the same bullshit the He’s had built for themselves, to think Guan Shan was who he wasn’t.

Because the thing was, Guan Shan knowing nothing, understanding nothing, and still pulling the trigger, pushing the needle, spilling the poison for the eighth, ninth, fifteenth time—he was worse.

 

* * *

 

The sun was setting over Chicago when Guan Shan found him, liquid gold rays and pink rose clouds. He was on the rooftop bar of the Chicago Athletic Association Hotel, coated in the splendour of the 1800’s which, when dressed right, He Tian matched perfectly.

Prettied up in a three-piece and bowler hat, a Tom Collins on the railing edge, he was nearly indistinguishable, but Guan Shan would know those shoulders anywhere, the way he held his cigarettes, the hazy look with which he stared out at a panorama.

Chicago lay out beneath him, and maybe in another universe it might have been his.

‘I had to pay the doorman five bucks to get in.’

He Tian glanced at him, at his dad’s jacket, his boots—at the men in groups around them muttering about some Chinese greaser kid who’d just walked in, who shouldn’t be there, who wasn’t on the _member’s list_. Roy Orbison was playing from the speakers on the terrace bar, an urgent youthful rhythm from musicians who didn’t know one week from the next, whose listeners were were just kids chasing something they could never catch up with, pin down, or explain to their parents. It didn’t belong to the men at the club.    

Guan Shan bit down on his tongue, and at He Tian he jerked up an eyebrow in challenge.

He Tian shifted his weight, narrowed a stare on the men behind Guan Shan. ‘You’re late,’ he said, and loosely handed Guan Shan the drink.

Guan Shan put it back on the railing. ‘D’you know why I’m at the institute? Why I’m really there?’

‘You tell me.’ He Tian took off his hat, and pushed out the faint semblances of a smile. ‘I already fucked up there.’

Guan Shan swallowed a sigh. His brow was furrowed as he looked at the cityscape, the creeping height of buildings and floodlights of cars and trundling buses. Grant Park and the glittering surface of Lake Michigan glanced over at him, arts and college buildings standing their ground. A windy city of violence and rhythm-and-blues and people who wanted to share a table, a water fountain, a bus seat.

‘They want me to kill the President,’ said Guan Shan. ‘Your brother. The governor—your father. Chairman Mao. The People’s Republic. That’s what they’re giving me.’

Out the corner of his eye, Guan Shan watched He Tian toss back the rest of the Tom Collins. He put the glass back down, dragged his finger through the ring of condensation across the waxed wooden railing.

‘You know what I’d like?’ He Tian said, sucking at a loosened bead of liquor on his lower lip, and lighting a cigarette. ‘Some old Illinois rancher out in the middle of nowhere. Pumpkin fields, an apple orchard. Clear skies. Long drives to watch the music in Memphis. I hear that’s where it’s at these days.’

Guan Shan snatched an ashtray from a vacant table on the terrace. ‘Sounds pretty nice,’ he said truthfully. He handed He Tian the tray. ‘D’you know the irony of it all, though?’ he asked, thinking about the blue skies, jitterbug and swing, Perkins or Cash or Jackson or Presley crooning through the radio on a summer’s day, chair swinging on the porch, cicadas purring noisily. ‘You’re not gonna be stuck with your family ‘cause you failed. Or ‘cause you didn’t get first place. You’ll be stuck with ‘em ‘cause you succeeded. Your name will be right next to your brother’s, carryin’ on that same _centuries-old_ legacy you always say you don’t want any fuckin’ part of. You get first, and you’re showing your family and the whole institution that you’re no different. You’re a skilled killer. A murderer. A lethal He that can’t be any more fuckin’ different if he tried. And it’s sad ‘cause, well, you really want to think you’re _tryin'_.’

‘You don’t really know anything about me.’

Guan Shan didn’t know if that was true or not, but he said, ‘I know them. I know just what those kinds of people are like. They’ll fuck you over whatever chance they get.’

‘Like your father.’

Guan Shan’s lip curled. ‘He was a prisoner of war who didn’t get anything he deserved, good or bad. I’m fuckin’ _tired_ of some white guy deciding what people like my pa get to have in life.’

He Tian turned, stared out at the city until he was seeing the same thing as Guan Shan. ‘I get it,’ he said. ‘Your choices aren’t your own.’

‘That’s not—’ But Guan Shan stopped himself short. He let the building wind strike him across the face, sharp and cool this high up until his eyes watered. ‘Yeah. You’re right.’ He lowered his eyes. ‘I’d come with you. If I could. To that rancher. Not sure we’d last long together, unless it was a big one.’

He Tian nodded. ‘You’re right,’ he said, and Guan Shan knew, even before He Tian started speaking again, that he wasn’t talking about their idyllic countryside escape. ‘I’m stuck with my family no matter what.’

He said it like he wasn’t new to the idea, like this wasn’t a realisation Guan Shan had just sprung on him to make him see the truth for once. He already knew, and Guan Shan found that more painful than he thought he would. The hopelessness, the resignation—how long had he had it buried under a stockpile of arrogance and Atlas-made surety that said he could hold up the world if he wanted to enough? How long had Guan Shan been believing in the lie?

Maybe He Tian was right: maybe Guan Shan really didn’t know anything about him.

‘You could run away,’ he said limply. ‘Get on your bike—your stupid rich boy Caddy—and just get the fuck out of dodge.’

‘They’d find me,’ He Tian said. And then, ‘Would you come with me?’

When the wind came next, Guan Shan felt like it had taken his breath with it. It wasn’t hard because he wanted to say no; it was hard—fuck him and everything He Tian carried with him—because he wanted to say yes.

‘I can’t leave my family,’ he said eventually, feeling his lungs burn. ‘If I don’t do this now… They’ll take my family. I know too much. They know I’ll do anything.’ His hand rasped against his shorn head. ‘Fuck, even—even kill the fuckin’ President of the United fuckin’ States.’

‘Tell me how you really feel.’

Guan Shan shrugged off He Tian’s dry tone. ‘I feel like we’re stuck here, and we’re never gonna get out. I feel like we’ve wasted our whole fuckin’ lives here.’

He Tian made a quiet sound. He leaned forward over the railing, a leg kicked back behind him, hands clasped loosely together.

‘I feel,’ he said, ‘like it might be alright if you’re here too.’

**Author's Note:**

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